Squareup
Introduction
Squareup is a North American international technology conglomerate with its headquarters based in San Francisco, United States while it operates and serve several markets in countries such as Australia, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, as well as Japan. In its entirety, Squareup builds solutions that helps every size of business to succeed. In essence, it was founded in a bid and desire to avail all business owners the most seamless and hassle free way to take credit cards. Since its inception up to date, the company strives to ensure it offers variety of business tools, suites as well as equitable loans tailored for every qualified client and avail them the platform to access and seek for business funds. With its terms and conditions guiding every products it offers, customers can choose to opt for the product that best suits their business needs and wants.
Statistics & Key Facts
Founding Year: Squareup was founded in the year 2009, approximately 13 years ago in St. Louis Missouri by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey
Industrial Ranking: Squareup although was funded in the year 2009 has since been been appearing on several top ranking agencies such as Forbes, and Fortune Magazines. Typically, over the years the company was ranked in the 2nd position of Fortune Future 50 list, indicating the company’s level of high prospect and a chance to expand more in the industry. And 208th in Fortune 500 2022 list.
Company Type: A Public Corporation (PLC)
Market Reach: Squareup operates in more than 7 major countries across the globe and connects to its customers through its physical offices strategically located in these countries as well as its digital platforms which include its official website, social media handles, as well as Apps and solutions.
Industry Type:Financial Services, Mobile Payment, POS
Workforce Strength: According to Fortune, Squareup has a total number of 8, 521 employees in its workforce globally as of the year 2022.
Historical Background
The formulation of the company was prompted by an issue faced by Jim McKelvey a co-founder of the company when he lost the sale of one of his product amounting to a total sum $2000 USD simply because he couldn’t accept credit cards as a means of payment. As a result of this issue, Jim conjoined with Jack Dorsey who as also a co-founder of Twitter to co-found the company known today as Square, Inc. The foundation of the company was then laid in a small office in St. Louis. It was however reported that the company’s name “Sqaure” is a derivative of its square-shape-like credit card.
Upon founding the company, the two founders worked out the plan of the business through hard-work and diligence ensuring the goals and objectives of the company is reached and attained while it walked towards delivering and fulfilling its mission and vision. They duo utilize several mechanisms that ensures and guarantee business expansion and development such as merger, partnership as well as acquisitions.
Squareup built a solution that enables both small, medium and large enterprises accept credit cards as a method of payment while using mobile devices such as table and smartphones as payment ledger for a POS (point of sales system). The company had grown to build several other brands such as Cash App that allows end-to-end fund transfers between users and business owners.
In the year 2010, Squareup released its payment platform in the United States and the same payment platform was also released in Canada a couple of year after, typically, 2012.
In August, the year 2014, a company operating under the name, Victory Park Capital that deals with asset management stepped in to invest in Square Capital. And in the following year, May 015, Square Capital secured another fund from the same company, Victory Pack Capital who only by this time decided to triple the amount it initially invested.
By 2016, the company recorded in its financial report that it had loaned out a total sum of 1 Billion USD to company through its business division, Square Capital since the founding of the division.
In the year 2019, the company made it known to the press that it has bought a Toronto-based deep learning firm, operating under the name, Dessa.
In the year 2020, October, in a bid to secure financial future investment, Squareup droped a proportion of 1% of its total assets which is an equivalent of $50 million USD in Cryptocurrency to purchase 4, 709 Bitcoin. It was revealed by the company that its intention was geared by fact that Bitcoin has the potential of becoming a universal currency in a very near future.
In November, 2020, the company again announced its acquisition of a free DIY (do-it-yourself) tax filing startup operating with the name, Credit Karma Tax. The company however, concluded that the newly purchased startup would form part of its Cash App business segment. The deal was sealed in at $50 million deal.
In February 2021, Squareup again bought another Bitcoin worth $170 million USD. As at this time, the company’s overall investment in Bitcoin amounted to a total sum of 4500 million USD with an approximation of 8, 207 Bitcoins.
On the 2nd of March, 2021 Squareup meet an agreement to by most of the ownershi control of Tidal. The two company reached an agreement that the investment would be based on both cash and stock. In essence, the deal would be sealed in total sum of $297 million USD (both cash and share) coupled with the agreement that Jay-Z, the popular musician would also step in a one of the company’s Board of Directors.
In August, 2021, the company announced that it had acquired a company offering a post-paid service with the name, Afterpay. On the 31st of January, 2022, the deal was sealed in an-all-stock contract valuing at $29 billion USD.
However, on the 1st of December, 2021, the company made it known in a press release that it would rebrand the company’s name to Block, Inc. And following the announcement, the change was effected on the 10th of December that year. It was also reported that the during the name change period, the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey was also stepped down as Twitter’s CEO at the same time.
On the 16th of December 2021, a couple of days after the company’s name has been changed to Block, Inc, a company operating under the name, H&R Block filed a lawsuit against the company for trademark infringement. The claim was on the premise that the public and clients would be confused and there are high chances of mistaking the company’s name and products with theirs.
On the 31st of January, 2022, the company announced that it had sealed a contract deal with Afterpay and went ahead to acquire the company.
Financial Overview
The information below represents the company financial standing as of the 3rd of May 2022 according to Fortune Magazine as well as some reports from the company’s previous year.
Revenue: 17. 661 Billion USD (Fortune 2022)
Total Assets: 13. 925.8 Billion USD (Fortune 2021)
Net Income (Profit): 166.3 million USD (Fortune 2021)
Total Equity: 3.272 Billion USD (2021)
Operating Income: 232.24 million USD (2021)
Market Value: $78. 655. 9 USD (Fortune 2022)
Subsidiaries
Weebly
Tidal
Afterpay
Business Segments & Solution Niches
Commerce
Online Store
Point of Sale
Invoices
Online Checkout linkes
Virtual terminal
Social media
All Online Solutions
Payment Processing
Browse hardware
Customers
Marketing
Messages
Appointments
Loyalty programs
Customers directory
Website template
Gift cardsProduct photography
Banking
Checking
Savings
Loans
Staff
Payroll services
Scheduling and time tracking
Permissions and insights
Employee benefits
Developer
App Marketplace
Find an agency
Developer APIs
Contact Sales
Business Types/Industries
The following list of industries are industries the company currently operates and offers its services to. The list include are not be limited to:
Food and Beverage
Retail
Beauty
Services
Large Businesses
Pros and Cons
According to research-based reviews on startups.co.uk, the following under-listed are the pros and cons of Squareup.
Pros include:
The deposits funds into clients accounts withing a couple of days
Square solutions allows several integrations including a variety of e-commerce platforms
Free cash deposit transactions
Charges only 1.75% on every transaction, regardless of the transaction size
Take payments offline
Has a durable battery that could last for 24/hrs a day
Cons include:
The chip and pin function may not be pleasant to some customers
The card reader is less user-friendly compared to others
Merchant accounts can receive however transaction fees
Not relatively suitable for industries with high risks.
Conclusion
Knowing and understanding what truly constitute a company is quit important and crucial especially when one is looking at doing a business or dealing in any way with such company in the future. However, with all the information extensively addressed and revealed in this piece, I hope you are able to gather as many important and valid information and data you need, and that this piece would help shape your decision in the right direction.
